I became confident. DH disconnected.

[L0stinCyberspace]

Apologies - I've been posting a lot about my marriage issues and DH recently. Trying to make sense of what's been happening between us for years.

It suddenly hit me that around the time our marriage became sexless, I'd become confident and was achieving more in my hobbies and work. My health also greatly improved due to better meds for my autoimmune condition.

DH is not conscious that this is the reason he put a distance between us but I suspect this was a subconscious reaction. We are in couples counselling but I'm so sad. There's no going back to lacking self confidence like I was previously, so is there any way forward?

Nobody can probably answer this really. Just feeling very alone and unsettled by that's happening and I'd appreciate any insights or advice.

@JustAnother0ldMan I suppose because I love him, but I'm not stupid. We have a few sessions' counselling to go, but I'm not decided yet what needs to be done.

[quote L0stinCyberspace]@JustAnother0ldMan ah, but he has no problem with Reddit porn or sexting the women posting their amateur clips, he just seems to have a problem with having sex with ME![/quote]
Whoa there, what?

Possibly he's looking at porn to try and revive his AD-hammered libido, but this is waaay inappropriate.

@Catullus5 yes, it was wildly inappropriate. I nearly split up with him that day.

@NewLevelsOfTiredness

How did it make you view the relationship? I'm just curious - I was the man in the scenario at the beginning but it played out in the opposite way...

My girlfriend was in the early recovery phase of a deep depression when I met her. We had a pretty decent ten years together - certainly a lot of happiness and very little anger. But I did support her a lot, emotionally and financially, including emmigrating to her home country so she could also have the support of her family. She finally got accepted to her dream university course after about six years. She did great and as you can imagine it did wonders for her self-esteem.

The person she was developing into was even more fantastic than the one I had met. Except that she sort of outgrew me I guess, or at least I think the dynamic in our relationship was too ingrained by then for her. So she finished it. It was all fairly amicable and I suppose I can't be sure how it would have progressed, but I had been excited to make that journey with her. I'm not sure what really killed it for her - maybe she felt like she'd have to spent x years proving herself 'equal' even if I didn't see it that way? Or maybe the love on her side was based on the support. We did take a long walk months later to do a bit of a postmortem on the whole thing but didn't really work it out!

We're both happy with other people now, and I did find someone in a more complete phase of their life. Her new guy seems lovely too.

I'm not sure my point - just that maybe starting out in an unbalanced relationship in that sense has all sorts of pitfalls.

@NewLevelsOfTiredness it made me very sad that he'd retreated, very burnt out as I was the only one contributing.

According to your other posts your marriage has been sexless for years. So even if there is a connection between you becoming more confident and his lack of desire for you, I don't see how that could help solve anything.

If you are going to make a decision at the end of couples counseling perhaps you need to think in advance of some sort of criteria to help you decide, to prevent you looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt. Perhaps that won't work if you're still working out what you feel, but ISTM you've thought about it a good deal.

A word of warning. DW and I do seem to have fixed up our marriage, but it took years and we had things in our favour. It's a long, long road and no certainty of happiness at the end of it.

This all sounds very unfair for you... have you told him how you feel? If you have, has he made any effort to make the relationship better?

@Catullus5

According to your other posts your marriage has been sexless for years. So even if there is a connection between you becoming more confident and his lack of desire for you, I don't see how that could help solve anything.

If you are going to make a decision at the end of couples counseling perhaps you need to think in advance of some sort of criteria to help you decide, to prevent you looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt. Perhaps that won't work if you're still working out what you feel, but ISTM you've thought about it a good deal.

A word of warning. DW and I do seem to have fixed up our marriage, but it took years and we had things in our favour. It's a long, long road and no certainty of happiness at the end of it.

Thank you for the insightful reply. You're correct, I've done a lot of thinking and I'm deciding on my criteria for stay/leave. If DH only was attracted to me when I was needy and sick, then can it really be turned around, even if he makes great progress in counselling? I'm just not sure.

Glad u and your DW fixed things.

@morningglory84

This all sounds very unfair for you... have you told him how you feel? If you have, has he made any effort to make the relationship better?

We're in couples counselling and I've told him exactly what I feel. It's a bit late in the day to make things better now as we are in crisis.